6/28/2010

New Fox News piece: Court's Gun Decision An Important Win for Americans Who Want to Defend Themselves

My newest piece at Fox News starts this way:

With another closely decided 5 to 4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled today that state governments are not able to ban most Americans from owning most types of handguns. The court ruled that firearms are "essential for self-defense." The court found that if the Second Amendment indeed protects an individual right to own a gun, the notion that the government can't ban all handguns is the minimum protection the Constitution can offer.

Yet, just as with abortion, this is the first of what is likely to be a long string of court decisions.

The decision is an important win for Americans who want the right to self-defense, but the decision also indicates how many questions still must be answered.

When the “Heller” decision was handed down in 2008 striking down Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban and gunlock regulations, Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley predicted disaster. He said that overturning the gun ban was "a very frightening decision" and predicted more deaths along with Wild West-style shootouts and that people "are going to take a gun and they are going to end their lives in a family dispute." Washington’s Mayor Adrian Fenty similarly warned: "More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence."

Yet, Armageddon never arrived. . . .


A copy of the decision is available here.

Look at what Breyer, joined by Sotomayor and other liberals, wrote:

I can find nothing in the Second Amendment’s text, history, or underlying rationale that could warrant characterizing it as “fundamental” insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes. . . .


In my view, taking Heller as a given, the Fourteenth Amendment does not incorporate the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for purposes of private self- defense. . . .


Amazing. I don't know how they can write what they do with the Alito decision documenting the debate over the 14th Amendment.

See also John Stossel's piece here.



Here is another piece at AOL News.

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8 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Amazing. I don't know how they can write what they do with the Alito decision documenting the debate over the 14th Amendment.
That's only because people like you and I use the data to find the answer, rather than starting with a preordained answer and accumulating or creating data that seems to support that answer.

6/28/2010 12:37 PM  
Blogger David said...

Decades ago this would likely have been a 9-0 decision!

6/28/2010 1:45 PM  
Blogger Harry Schell said...

Breyer is simply ignoring whatever he has to so he can rail against something he "knows" is "wrong". A servile mind to liberal dogma, he cannot accept facts.

Like Ginsburg, and her reference to "other free societies" which don't live with 2A rights, neither care about doing their job to understand and uphold the Constitution and all its clauses, not just the ones they prefer.

The Ginsburg quote is particularly galling, considering the crime situation in the UK and what is in our Constitution, and why it is there. What other countries do is not relevant, ma'am. Not part of the question. Or would you have us hand over farmland along the lines Zimbabwe does? What else has your fancy?

6/28/2010 2:35 PM  
Blogger John A said...

5 signed the majpority opinion. BUT, as with Heller, that does not mean 4 were against.

Thomas actually wrote a concurrence but thinks “Privileges and Immunities” is better support for that position than the majority stressing “Due Process” clause.

Justice Scalia’s opinion is actually a concurrence as well – he attacks Stevens’ opinion.

Haven't heard much else on non-majority. Does Stevens once again say that the law is bad (well, that 2nd should be incorporated) but "so what?"

6/28/2010 4:21 PM  
Blogger TooMuchTime said...

Yet, Armageddon never arrived. . . .

This is typical of all liberals. They cry from the mountain tops that the sky is falling but all data shows it is not.

I would point you to Michael Crichton's website to read his speeches but they've been removed. Hmmmm.

6/28/2010 10:10 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

This time it truly is 5-4. Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy & Thomas all concurred in substance, although Scalia and Thomas wrote separate concurrences emphasizing different opinions on some details. The predictable "progressives" (Bryer, Stevens, Ginsberg and Sotomayor) all thumbed their noses at all the evidence and history.

6/28/2010 11:51 PM  
Blogger bdickens said...

What is amazing is that four illiterate people made it all the way to the Supreme Court bench.

6/30/2010 8:12 AM  
Blogger Martin G. Schalz said...

Those in dissent are simply fools whom follow illegal SCOTUS cases that occured post reconstruction. Sotomayor is a fine example of an idiot who relies on those bad cases that were simply made so as to deny black folks their God given right to defend themselves form those who wished them harm. Jim Crow Laws also arose out of these clearly illegal cases as well. The original gutting of the 14th amendment was done simply for politcal purposes as well as a fear of a southren uprising of blacks against whites, and yet we have a so called minority (Sotomayor) justice whom has repeatedly relied on these cases to rule on other matters.

As in the case of U.S. v Miller, most do not know that not only was Miller dead at the time of that case, no counsel was even present for the Miller side. If we are to look at U.S. v Miller, that case hinged upon whether or not a sawed off shotgun constituted a 'milita weapon', which at that time the U.S. Military had 30,000 or so short barreled shotguns stored in armories.

I predict that in the future, there will be an argument as to what weapons are allowed for private ownership that the 2nd Amendment allows, as it seems to I, there has been an emphasis on sidearms in this case.

Last but not least, there was only one documented shootout in the main street of a town during the "wild west" days. Anybody ever hear of Wild Bill Hickok and Dave Tutt? Obviously, the liberals neither understand history, or they distort it to further their own agenda.

6/30/2010 12:48 PM  

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